Genesis 28:10-19a Commentary

It’s a shame the RCL cuts off this story in Genesis 28 before getting to the final 3 verses.  Perhaps it would be a stretch to say those verses are the kicker but for certain they tell us a great deal about this rascal Jacob who is the focus of this middle part of Genesis.  The well-known Sunday school version of this story makes it sound like Jacob’s response to his ladder to heaven dream was singularly pious and positive.  He sets up his stone-for-a-pillow rock as a kind of altar, consecrates it with an anointing of oil, and declares that place’s new name: “God’s House” or beth-el in Hebrew.

However, as they say on certain TV commercials, “But wait!  There’s more!”  Because as he prepares to continue his journey and leave God’s House behind for the time being, Jacob switches from playing the part of a loyal servant of God to playing his version of “Let’s Make a Deal.”  “Tell you what, Mighty God” Jacob prays.  “If you come through for me, keep me safe, get me back to my father’s house someday, then I will let you be my God.  Deal?”  Until then, apparently, all bets are off in terms of Jacob’s relationship and fealty to this God.

In my sermon commentary from last week on Jacob’s stealing his brother’s birthright blessing, Jacob never did anything in his life without having a plan.  Jacob was forever working the angles, conniving and scheming to get himself ahead of life’s game.  He has already snookered his brother once and still to come is yet another scheme this time to snooker both his blind elderly father and once more his somewhat slow-witted brother Esau.  And once he flees from home due to the fallout of that deception, he will eventually land on his Uncle Laban’s estate and before Jacob is through with Uncle Laban, most of that estate will be carted off by Jacob.

In the movie Good Morning, Vietnam, at one point an Army general is dealing with the fallout that came after his Armed Forces Radio Network’s #1 hit radio host Adrian Cronauer (played hilariously by Robin Williams) edited the audio of a news conference with former Vice-President Richard Nixon to make Nixon sound foolish.  At one point Cronauer’s immediate supervisor said this was terrible especially seeing that Nixon is such an honorable and decent man.  The general then arched his eyebrows and said, “Bull!  I know Nixon personally and I can tell you that he has left a trainload of [crap] in his wake sufficient to fertilize the Sinai!”

Jacob was like that.  In his wake was a lot of human and familial wreckage and ever-so-much deceit and crafty trickery.  And now even faced with a lyric dream of Almighty God himself, replete with mind-blowing and lavish promises for the future of Jacob and his descendants, even so Jacob tries to one-up God to strike a deal.  Jacob will allow this God to be also his God if and only if he comes through for Jacob.  He takes a wait-and-see posture vis-à-vis God!  Stunning.

But here’s the thing: God knew all of this about Jacob.  Of course God did!  He knew of Jacob’s guile and craftiness, of his penchant to lie and cheat his way through any situation to ensure that he’d come out ahead if not on top.  And yet . . . look at the promises of this dream!  The only better thing God could have promised to give Jacob would have been throwing in also the moon and the stars.

Jacob wakes up and—to what should be a surprise for Christians reading this text today—declares he had no idea God was in that place.  He stumbled upon God’s House by accident.  “I didn’t know God lived here!” Jacob says.  To those of us who believe in the omnipresence of God, who believe God hears our prayers no matter the location from which we speak them, Jacob’s ignorance of God’s presence anywhere and everywhere looks a bit odd.  But then, this story comes from pretty early in God’s covenant relationship with this chosen people and so if their theology was not exactly well developed or rounded out, it ought not be too shocking.  Jacob lived at a time when it was believed that certain gods were localized and at a time when some believed that here and there you could find yourself in a “thin place” where the barrier between wherever a god dwelled and where you were was somewhat porous.

Yet even in this story we see a new idea dawning: God is with his people no matter where they go.  And if this story has anything else to teach us, it is that God rather surprisingly is willing to stick with a trickster like Jacob despite his less savory qualities.  God has some growth goals in mind for Jacob and before his story is finished, we will see this in this man who some years hence will get a new name given to him by God himself: Israel.

Illustration Idea

The dream that we have come to label “Jacob’s Ladder” is one of the best known stories in the Bible.  But like lots of other Bible stories, this one fades into the background eventually and you just don’t see many references to it later on.  Except in this case for one notable—but easy-to-miss—exception.

It comes in John 1 when we read this beginning at verse 45:

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”  “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.  “Come and see,” said Philip.

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”  “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.  Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

In the end Jesus clearly alludes to Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.  But first when he sees Nathanael, he declares him to be an Israelite who is free of deceit or guile.  As a commentator once said, you could as easily translate the upshot and gist of what Jesus is saying here by putting it this way: “Here is an Israel with no Jacob in him.”  Jesus is praising Nathanael despite his having just sneered at his brother that nothing good could come out of podunk Nazareth.  And yet Jesus sees honesty in Nathanael, an inquiring spirit, someone who would be willing to live up to the name of Israel, which of course means the one who struggles with God.

In any event, this reference to Genesis 28 is striking for several reasons but most certainly what this signals is that Jesus is the incarnation of the same God who made all those promises to Jacob back at Bethel and all of those promises were soon going to find their “Yes” in this man from, of all places, Nazareth.  Jesus is himself now the living Bethel, the living House of God, as John had said earlier in his prologue: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The House of God is Jesus and by his grace, we like Nathanael get to be mini-Bethels ourselves once God’s Holy Spirit takes up residence in our very hearts.